I once worked in an organisation where someone suggested that I had so many gadgets I was as worse as James Bond!
I don’t think so!
Anyway, I’ve been very impressed with the I-Phone. It is the first time that I’ve seen a device enabling ease of access to both Web-browsing and email - all based on the a world where we can now always be online…

Other innovations that have been impressive this week include Mogulus:

As an experiment with feeds et al I’ve just loaded up the entire set of 20 videos created for Season 1 of the Know Wow show.

Next, I need to see if I can watch them on an i-phone and then consider the true capability of ‘live’ video blogging!

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In a recent post I said I’d talk about one of my recent escapades, re: business trust.
There are a couple of sayings that come to mind:
‘What goes around, comes around’ and ‘Karma’  -BTW one of my favourite programmes is ‘My Name is Earl’.

In recent weeks my team were working on a replacement business solution for a client.
The client had come to us via an a friend of an Associate who was working for our company.

The situation involved one of their key operational tools that kept failing due to email indexing issues.
What also did not help was  that the client organisation had fallen out with their  supplier of  14  years and all previous versions. Or, was it the other way round!

After taking over the system, re-writing the procedure guide we outsourced its stablisation with the precedent that our organisation would not be held responsible for its source code or continued issues.

The good news is that the system became stable. We then suggested a business review at a cost of 10 days in November 2007. The client agreed but only made a part payment once the work was completed. In addition, they found the 3 solution’s suggested too expensive. After some client holiday breaks and what appeared as a lack of confidence to adhere to our recommendations the project was restarted but with a client request to find another 3 but cheaper solutions. No additional costs were to be applied at this stage as the remaining payment appeared to be held in ransom.

The business review was restarted, additional development from new solution  providers developed and remote demonstrations organised. In parallel 2 iterations of functionality Vs requirements Vs capability were issued.
Remote demonstrations were selected as the 3 vendors needed access to their development environments to effectively simulate each proposed solution. NB All signed Non Disclosure Agreements.

Cutting to the chase, the client decided to go direct to one of the solution providers rather than use our company to perform essential systems integration work (a questionable justification was stated). The client did pay the balance of owed consultancy  - it took 8 months.

As a company we felt that we had tried hard to find a good solution. Maybe we were being strung along and often there is no way of telling if one is or not. I remember somebody once said that one company had decided to only do business with good people. However, I’m still of the opinion that if one has a clean, humble and honest heart one can hope to succeed.

Life goes on and in business you can only work hard and wish for genuineness.

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A few years ago I managed to get a Corporate podcast to both work through an Intranet and itunes.
In recent weeks one of the shows my company produces called: The Smooth Groovers Review achieved 42 reviews.

I then thought, ‘How does the itunes featured podcast’ choice work.
Is it via algorithm or human intervention. Some have suggested it has a commercial link.

The following article, albeit originally written by Mark Glaser back in 2006 has some fascinating insights…
Its entitled, ‘How Does iTunes Pick Featured Podcasts?‘

In summary it suggests:

• Physical intervention - Real people watching and looking
• Some algorithmic applied work

With regard to the latter, one of the contributors suggests:

The Top100 lists are driven purely by an algorithm that looks at new subscriptions during the past week, with subs during the past day weighted heavily and older subscriptions weighted less (decay algorithm). We do not and have no ability to affect these lists.

To an increasing degree, the subject rooms (read Featured Podcasts) are also driven by data. With a huge, diverse, and rapidly growing set of podcasts in our directory, user behavior is our best gauge. It’s true that success tends to self-perpetuate, so we attempt to create algorithms that continually percolate material through the lists. But the best advice we can offer is to ask your users to subscribe to the podcast using the iTunes directory and, if they like what they hear, to write good things about you in the reviews.

For more background on the operations of the podcast page, please see the tech spec (http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/techspecs.html )

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It has been a while since my last podcast or even posting on my business blog.
This has not been down to apathy or a mental block - honest!

Quite simply it has been down to a number of issues.
Firstly, some business commitments with clients, some good and one as close as last week that showed how some client’s can misuse trust - More on that in a generic way in a future posting.

Secondly, I’ve been trying to refine the show.  The original shows focused on sharing best practice management consulting. I also produced 20+ video podcasts. The audio shows then moved to shorter ones focusing on communication skills, corporate podcasting techniques - all in an effort to suggest effective business strategies &/or tools.

Recently, my company have been re-branding and also rethinking the choice of services we offer.
What comes to mind is the choice of being too generalist Vs niche orientated.
There is some space in the middle as specific offerings can potentially be enhanced.

Take Corporate Podcasting as an example. It could be repositioned as New Media (new for how long!)
New Media then extends to Web2.0, social networking and the power of corporate blogging, especially in a customer service context.

In summary, I’ve decided to continue the shows but with a greater focus on New media, still with a focus on how it can helps organisations.

So, watch this space for new shows…

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